There's nothing like compassion to overcome your fears. You grab your keys and your wallet, slip on some shoes as quickly as you can, and race into the hall, carrying the poor feline in your arms. \n\nBut the second you step out of the apartment, it disappears!\n\nAnd what's worse, the door to your apartment shuts behind you!\n\nAnd worse still, the door's stuck! Push as you might, the door refuses to f*$@ing open!\n\nLooks like there's only two options:\n\nGo [[left|Left]].\n\nor\n\nGo [[right|Right]].
Your eyes flutter as someone next to you stands up. Rubbing your eyes, you see a familiar face. They say you were choking and then passed out.\n\n[[Good thing they were around to save you. That's what they say.|Start]]
"Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine..."\n\n???\n\nWhat happened?\n\nYou're pacing the hallway, muttering to yourself. Better hurry back to your room before anyone sees you like this.\n\nWhen morning comes and you shower, you notice a stinging feeling on the back of your neck.\n\nLooking into the mirror you find slashes cut into the back of your neck. Or are they scratches?\n\n[[Try not to think about it....|Start]]
Two sets of nondescript elevator doors stand before you, shut tightly, almost resolutely.\n\nPressing the button does nothing. You try waiting a little longer, but the elevator gives no sign that it'll ever move at all, if it ever once did.\n\n[[Continue around to the next hallway.|Other Hall2]]\n\n\n
Who could do such a thing?! \n\nThere are cuts around its paws you hadn't noticed. Deep cuts. As if someone was trying to cut them off.\n\nYou try to lift the cat to carry it to your car, but when you touch its stomach it lets out the most disturbing sound you've ever heard an animal make.\n\nSo you carefully attempt to lift it from its chest and bottom. Its heartbeat rapidly pulses against your palm.\n\n"It's okay. It's okay," you whisper reassuringly into what's left of its ears, but really you know there's not much of a chance of this creature making it through the night....\n\nBut you have to try! \n\nThere's an emergency vetenarian only two miles away.\n\n[[You have to hurry!|Vet]]
!Day <<print visited()>>\n\n<<if (visited() <= 3) and (visited() >1)>>\nNot again. This has to be a nightmare. This can't be real. Can it?\n<<else if (visited() > 4)>>\nI'm insane. I need help. Where did everyone go?\n<<endif>>\n\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\nThe sound stirs you from sleep. Bleary eyed you look about your bedroom confusedly, trying to locate the source of the incessant racket. It's somewhere outside your apartment, but from which direction, from which of your neighbors is the ruckus coming from? You focus on the source.\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\nThe front door. Someone's banging on the front door. The ethereal light cast over you from the window suggests the moon has yet to fall. Unlike your eyelids, which slowly drop like stage-curtains over a sad act, over-played and exhausted from-\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\n''"SHH-TUM!"''\nGod damnit. What the hell do they want?\n\n[[Go take a look.|Door]] \n\n[[Ignore it. You need to get up early tomorrow, afterall.|Ignore]]
You take a single step in its direction and, as if it //heard// you, it starts to roll right towards you. \n\n[[Kick it.|Kick]]\n\n[[Run.|Run]]
It's difficult to examine with all the blood, but... -Oh s*@#! Please don't die... please don't die...\n\n\n...It's not breathing....\n\n\n\n...Please... oh God....\n\nNot again... [[not again....|Start]]
''BOOMPH!''\n''BOOMPH!''\n''BOOMPH!''\n''BOOMPH!''\n''BOOMPH!''\n\nYou kick the thing in the back until it stops moving.\n\n[[Open it?|Open Bag]]\n\n[[Leave it. |Hall2]]
Half-way along this hallway are the refuse shoots. The stench is acrid, in the same sense as an emulsifier might be. You can hardly keep yourself from gagging.\n\nThe opening to one of the shoots has a garbage bag lodged into it.\n\n[[Push the garbage down.|Garbage]]\n\n[[Continue down the hall.|Hall2]]
When the mysterious-yet-undoubtably-threatening source of the sound reaches you-- and though you're ready for a struggle-- you're still shocked to //feel// the force of the thing trying to get out. \n\nThe harder it pushes, the more determined you are to not let it get out. The clamor is deafening. So much desperation.... \n\n''It-it's //crying.//''\n\nBut your pity is buried by an overwhelming sense of disgust. It can't get out. Don't let it get out. You throw your entire weight against it.\n\nSoon the struggle dies down. The interval between each blow becomes longer and longer. And good thing too, your resolve is wearing thin. Then it finally stops entirely.\n\n...\n\n...\n\nBut you don't let go.\n\n...\n\n...\n\nAnd then it scampers up the shoot, each dissonant pound echoing with a more distant boom.\n\n...\n\nYou can let go now.\n\n[[Continue down the hallway.|Hall2]]
There's no one there. \n\n\n\nNo one there.\n\n\n\nThere never was....\n\n\n\n''Where are you?''\n\n''Where did you go?''\n\n//The end.//
You nearly trip over one of the packed suitcases you set against the wall. But you manage to find your way through the dimly lit room to the common area: the space you share with your flat-mates. Well, ex-flat-mates. They all left.\n\n"SHH-TUM!"\n\nThe sound startles you. The front door is only a couple yards away and from this distance you notice a distinct //wet// quality to the knocking. Like a sodden steak slamming against the entranceway. To say it's unnerving would be a gross understatement. \n\nYou reconsider checking the door. [[Maybe it's not such a good idea. |Ignore]]\n\nCuriosity may have killed the cat, but as far as you know no one of your lineage contains a trace of felinity. [[Look through the peep-hole |Peep]]
It's not that you're scared of it. It's not that you're unsettled by it.\nIt's the blood.\n\n\nSomething about the way it oozes across the vinyl floor doesn't sit well with you.\n\nIt's like it's purposefully flowing towards your feet. Like it's... //reaching// for you.\n\nYou step backwards into your bedroom....\n\nThe air vent carries the sounds of whispering. You get it now. It's telling you to slit your wrists.\n\n[[....|Start]]
You slip off one of your shoes... and... slowly... raise it... over... the bug...\n\n''SMACK''\n\nYou slam the heel of the sneaker down but it manages to scuttle away into a crack in the wall. \n\nMaybe next time.\n\n[[Continue around to another hallway|Other Hall]]
The glow of the television greets you coldly, casting a blueish light over the white sheets. It sits over the pillows, facing you. A woman's displayed on the screen, singing. She looks into ==you== the camera. \n\nYou step into the room and barely notice the door closing behind you....\n\n"It's been so long...."\n\n//The End.//
The walls are covered with nails. Not just nails: when you look closer you see pins, staples, and thumb-tacks, too. Thousands of them. None of them supporting anything.\n\nA tv lays by the wall, unplugged and turned over onto its screen.\n\nThere's the sound of a woman's ''heavy breathing'' coming from the bedroom.\n\nThe living room floor is consumed by piles of garbage: wrappers, broken bottles, caps, containers, plastic bags, soiled linen, dirty napkins, empty cans, towels, discarded children's clothing, a worm crawling over a pacifier, flies mingling on a plate, sucking on dried-up steak sauce....\n\nYou hear a woman's voice through static, like through a radio with bad reception. She's ==pleading== singing. It sounds like a lullaby you've never heard before.\n\nIt draws you closer.\n\n[[Do you want to go into the bedroom?|Bedroom]]\n\n[[Or leave?|Leave]]\n\n
Dwelling
You try not to make a sound as you approach the door, careful not to shuffle nor drag your soles across the hard-wood floor. \n\nBut outside you see no one at your doorstep.\n\n[[Open the door.|Open]]
Whoever lives like this can't be sane. You need to leave. You head out without looking behind you.\n\nOn the floor is a note.\n\nIn a scrawling, semi-cursive hand it reads, [["You'll never leave me."|Start]]
Silently, you step into the hall. Looking left and right, you don't see any signs of anyone having been there-- the place is absolutely antiseptic: glossy, white walls, buzzing fluorescent lights and a dry, lingering coldness in the air make you feel like you're being watched- no... //observed//.\n\nOn both sides, the floral pattern of the carpet stretches into a blurred oblivion where the walls meet, way off into the distance. You don't remember the hallway being so long. Nor the walls to be glistening, but maybe it's just the light. Or lack thereof, since the window beside the left corner is letting in only the faintest of starlight.\n\nWait a second. \n\nThe curtains are moving.\n\n[[Investigate|Investigate]]\n\n[[Close the door|Ignore]]
Fatigue starts to set in, but you refuse to budge. Holding the door perfectly still, you peer out through the sliver of space between the chipped-edge of the door and the doorframe. Your vision begins to blur. Your head-- to be precise, your temples-- begin to pulse with the beginnings of a headache. You swear you hear something:\n\nA creaking sound, like a rusty hinge opening.\n\n[[Turn around|Turn Around]]\n\n[[It's just your bedroom door. It does that all the time.|Uncertainty]]\n
It's best to be polite. Only a lunatic would just barge right on into a stranger's home.\n\n''Knock-knock''\n\n...\n\n...\n\n...\n\n''Knock-knock''\n\n...\n\n...\n\n//Running Footsteps-//\n\n''-SLAM!!!''\n\nThe door shuts in your face, followed by the *clicks* of both locks.\n\nWell what did you expect?\n\n[[Continue around to the next hall. That thing is still making that chirping noise.|Chirping]]
This isn't happening! This is a nightmare! This isn't real! \n\n\n\n''"Meoowwww..."''\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhen you open your eyes, you still see the cat. \n\n\n\nOnly now it's laying motionless on its side. A dark puddle of maroon expands from it.\n\n[[Back away|Back Away]].\n\nOh God! Maybe it's not too late! [[Try to help|Approach]].\n\n
You accumulate more cuts as you try to quickly get back inside and in your rush you fall to the floor. Instinctively, you look back.\n\nHe stares at you, crookedly. His eyes are effusive with, at its best interpretation, enthrallment. At its worst, hunger.\n\n"Mine," he says in a hoarse voice. "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, [[MINE!"|Muttering]]
Uncertainty weighs heavily on your already tired mind.\n\nA nagging thought keeps popping up: Maybe you're just imagining all of this. If only the sleeping pills actually did anything.\n\nAwareness dawns on you... \n\n\n\n\nsomething is tugging on your shirt.\n\n\n\nYou turn around but only meet emptiness.\n\nThere's a wet spot on the back of your shirt. Maybe it's sweat.\n\n\n\nYou close the door and return to bed, trying in vain to forget this ever happened.\n\n[[But it did happen, didn't it.|Start]]
The second you look you regret this decision.\n\nPale, almost translucent flesh.\nBald, lump-laden head.\nSoft, toothless gums.\n\nThe brain spills from the skull like a yolk from an egg. The child's eyes, brown, stare ahead, still watery. The body, undernourished with a bloated belly and bony limbs.\n\nShe couldn't be older than four years old.\n\nYou drag your feet back to your room and fall onto the bed. If you were religious, you'd pray it was just a nightmare. But even though you close your eyes, it's not sleep that comes. It's just the image of... \n\n[[...It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your-|Start]]\n\n
It's probably a drunk who's lost his way back to his room. He'll probably tire of knocking and stumble away soon enough.\n\nSuddenly the knocking stops and a silence louder than the noise from before rings in your ears in a high-pitched squeal. Like an everlasting scream, caught in time and bound in space with no means of escape. \n\nYet it still screams... \nand screams... \n"and screams..."\n\nThe air vent whispers-- a sound in the foreground, something to break the silence and thankfully the screaming subsides to a diminishing echo you start to supress. But now your wide awake.\n\nAfter another restless night, you drift through the following day in a daze, a ghost passing through the transient sundries of life, fading in and out of being. \n\nThe world may be moving but you're surely standing still.\n\nYou're eager to get some rest when night finally returns like an old friend. With the comforting embrace of a dream, you welcome slumber with a pronounced snore.\n\n[[Until later that evening...|Start]]
Moth holes.\nFrayed edges.\nLapping. Whipping. Contorting.\n\nAnd Below:\n\nShattered glass.\n\nThe window was broken from the outside. You can tell by the presence of shards on the ground and the lack thereof on the bit of roofing that's visible. You look at the pieces and they stare back at you with a thousand eyes.\n\nYou shiver with the kiss of the wind blowing onto you. It's unnaturally freezing. Or maybe you're just unnaccustomed to it. Admittedly, you haven't been outside in a //long time.//\n\n[[Climb out.|Climb]]\n\n[[There's also the other hallway around the corner.|Other Hall]]
They find you grinding your teeth early the next morning.\n\n"Are... you okay?" one of your neighbors asks.\n\nYou look up at them with bags under your eyes...\n\n...and a dead bird in your hands.\n\n[[Shhh, it'll be okay. Just get some sleep. Hush now, baby darling.|Start]]
The banging thunderously resounds in the stale air, getting louder and louder as the source gets closer and closer. The door to the shoot is within your reach... and you within its.\n\n[[Hold the door shut.|Shut]]\n\n[[Back up towards the doorway. Just in case...|Back Up]]\n
You carefully slip through without cutting yourself too badly. Crossing your arms to try to warm yourself, you look up and see vague forms too opaque to let the light pass through. Clouds? But their edges come to sharp points.\n\n"''Ahhh!!!''" \n\nTo your left, about 10 yards away, stands a naked, skinless man digging his fingers into the muscle tissue of his chest. He shrieks into the heavens. \n\nThen he drops his arms and looks at you.\n\nIs he smiling? He doesn't have any lips. But his cheeks-- or, rather, his cheek muscles-- stretch back.\n\n[[Hurry back inside.|Inside]]
A row of looming doors standing silently along the sides-- you walk between them, trying not to let the feeling of being watched get to you. \n\nAt the end of the hallway there's a door to a staircase. But the doorhandle's gone.\n\nAround the bend you remember there being an [[elevator.|Elevator]]
<<if visited("Investigate")>>\nYou approach the broken window with some hesitation. \n\n...And then you hear it.\n\n''He-he-he-he''\n\nYeaaaahhhhh no. This isn't a good idea. Maybe you should [[head the other way?|Right]]\n\n<<else>>\nThere's a window in the corner. The pane can't be seen through: too much dust has settled on it.\n\nA cockroach crawls along the filth-laden ledge beneath the glass. Its antennae feel about first this way then that, like canes held by blind men left wandering alone. The insect, it could be said, is so irredeemably repellant with its varnished back being carried on bent sticks, each as thin as the width of a hair, and folded wings tucked into itself like concealed grotesqueries, and the whole wretch being the color of a burnt unguis.\n\nYou can [[squash it.|Squash]]\n\nOr continue around to the [[next hall|Other Hall]]\n<<endif>>
You want no part of this. But when you reach the door to leave, you feel someone's hand rest on your shoulder. \n\n[[Turn around?|Woman]]\n\n[[Just leave.|Leave End]]
As you walk by a door you notice it creak open ever so slightly. It could be just the breeze of you passing. It could be just that, you tell yourself.\n\n[[Head inside?|Other Apartment]]\n\n[[Or maybe knock first?|Knock]]\n\n\nWait! What the... //Is that a bird?// There's some sort of chirping coming from aroudn the corner... [[Investigate the chirping|Chirping]]
Trying not to breathe through your nose, you step up to the black bag and push it d-- what the hell?!\n\nSomething inside kicks at you. But it's too late, you already set the bag in motion and it tumbles down the shoot, screaming all the way.\n\nYou didn't mean to- you didn't know- how could you know- who could've- why did they- what was in there? \n\nThe scream... it was like a child's.\n\nBut then you notice a far-away sound. A sound that's getting louder, getting closer. A banging sound: something climbing up the shoot!\n\n[[Leave!|Hall2]]\n\n[[What the hell is that?|Garbage2]]
You can hear something chirping but no matter where you look, you just can't manage to locate where the sound is coming from. It sounds loudest in the center of the hall, but is it coming from one of the rooms or from in the ceiling?\n\nThe more you look, and the more you focus on the sound, the more your stomach sinks.\n\nBecause that's not the sound a bird makes...\n\nIt's mechanical. Like gears that are competing, both trying to turn but in opposing directions, yet their teeth are locked together, interconnected and [[ready to snap at any moment.|Grinding]]
You run down the hall and around to [[the other side.|Other Hall2]]
Its mouth is open, yellow teeth showing. \nIts head askance. Its neck snapped. \nIts eyes burnt out, charred soot and ash falling all about.\n\nThe animal stands on its hind legs, pawing at your shirt with one leg, an oozing stump where the other should be. Its skinned back, bruised and bulging with broken bones, cracks and shudders as it strains to remain standing.\n\n''"Meowwww,"'' it moans.\n\nIt-it's ==your cat== your old roommate's cat.... You helped look for it when it went missing... months ago....\n\n//It's dripping a mixture of spit and blood.//\n\n...and you gave up when...\n\n''Whhhhhen you fowww-nd my lehhhg.''\n\nThis isn't real! This isn't real! [[Close your eyes!|Refuse]]\n\nOh my God! It's a miracle it's still alive. [[Kneel and tend to it.|Tend]]
There's a wet spot on the carpet that spans the entire width of the hallway. The second you step onto it you stop. Look down.\n\n...\n\nWhy is it on you?\n\nWhY IS IT oN yOu?\n\nWh- iT IN Y-\n\n[[asingalneionsdbnajknrglbdzlve,nvlzbhzok|Choking]]
George Mylonas
The door flies open and out of the shoot spills a trashbag. You jump back, startled, but it lies still.\n\n[[Take a closer look?|Trash]]\n\n[[F#@& that! Let's keep moving.|Hall2]]
The click of the handle and the creak of the hinges make you cringe. There's no hiding now, ==whatever's== whoever's there must have heard that.\n\nYou peer from around the corner of the door, using it as a shield in case there's some kind of attacker, prowler, burglar, or....\n\nWhat were you expecting to be lurking there on the other side?\n\n\nCautious-minded, you [[wait a moment.|Wait]]\n\nThis is ridiculous. What are you nervous about? [[You step out into the hall.|Hall]]